Supermarkets are so successful because they provide what we want at a
reasonable price, writes Stephen Pollard.

It is fashionable among the Left-liberal intelligentsia to view supermarkets as some sort of uncouth offence against decency, fit only for the proles who subsist on multipacks of turkey twizzlers. Instead of driving off to shop at rapacious retail beasts we should be pottering down the high street, exchanging mid-morning pleasantries with our butcher, baker and candlestick maker.

So when, on Friday, a group of layabouts in Stokes Croft in Bristol decided to riot in protest at the opening of an 18th Tesco store in the city, there were frissons of excitement elsewhere. Violence might not be so easy to support, but how wonderful that someone is standing up against the supermarket juggernaut. As one writer put it in the Guardian on Saturday: "The damage caused to Tesco's property last night is relatively insignificant compared to the damage Tesco has been able to inflict."

Like most such fashions, this latest is built on a combination of hypocrisy and idiocy. Because you can bet your shopping bill on the fact that, at the very dinner parties when the anti-supermarket pieties are trotted out, almost everything has been bought from one of the chains.

Given that one in every seven pounds spent in the UK is spent in Tesco alone, it barely needs restating that supermarkets are the retailer of choice of almost everyone. Well over 90 per cent of us, in fact, use supermarkets regularly. We do so because they offer what we want: quality, value, range and convenience. And the better they get at it, the more custom we give them, and the bigger their profits.

So when Tesco announces record profits of £3.8 billion, as it did last week, that's something to be celebrated, not scorned. Its growing profits are a badge not of shame, as some idiots claim, but of pride – built on more of us choosing to shop there, and spending more, because we value what and how it is selling.

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When Tesco or any supermarket opens a new store, it stands or falls by customer demand. The retail sector is brutally competitive: 94 per cent of us have access to at least three brands of supermarket within a 15-minute journey of where we live, and customers use, on average, three different supermarkets a month. As huge businesses, supermarkets spread their costs over massive volumes and so take a minimal margin on each item. So although the operating profit margin of big suppliers such as Proctor and Gamble, Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline was found in a 2007 study to be 20 per cent, 13 per cent and 32 per cent respectively, the margin of the big four supermarkets was only between 2.2 and 6.2 per cent. That's one reason why, despite their massive profits, we spend a smaller proportion of our income on food than any other EU country.

But the facts are irrelevant to UK Uncut, an anti-capitalist protest group that has sprung up over the past year and which is heavily involved in protests against Tesco (along, in the Bristol protests, with the gloriously named but astonishingly silly Peoples Republic of Stokes Croft).

UK Uncut claims to be peaceful, involved only with sit-ins and orderly demonstrations at businesses it targets such as TopShop, Boots and Vodafone. But many of its activists seem, by a remarkable coincidence, to have been at the scene of a number of the riots and public order disturbances in recent months. Its beef is tax avoidance, arguing that the businesses it targets are culpable because they structure their affairs to minimise tax liabilities. In other words, they structure their affairs entirely legally, in accordance with tax rules, and avoid paying what would in effect be additional voluntary tax.

Were it not for what seems inevitably to accompany its activities, UK Uncut would be laughable. The Institute for Economic Affairs recently published a report that rips apart its contradictory, ill-informed, juvenile arguments. Indeed, in an unintentional self-parody of the group's deep-seated ignorance, UK Uncut staged a sit-in at Fortnum & Mason during last month's anti-cuts march, "over the tax dodge of over 40 million by its owners Whittington Investments which have a 54 per cent stake in Associated British Foods who produce Ryvita, Kingsmill and others and own Primark. ABF have dodged over £40 million in tax".

Ignore the illiteracy of UK Uncut's press release – is it Whittington Investments or ABF which have supposedly dodged £40 million in tax? – and the fact that it provided not a word of evidence for its claim. Rather, focus on the fact that ABF, Wittington Investments and Fortnum & Mason are all owned by the Garfield Weston Foundation, the 14th largest charitable foundation in the world. Not exactly the unacceptable face of capitalism.

Now it has its sights set on Tesco. Its website informs us that "Tesco control 30 per cent of the UK grocery market and have over 2,000 stores in the UK". There is no explanation as to why this is objectionable. It just is, it seems. But then it details Tesco's real crime: "In 2010 they made a profit of £3.4 billion, yet they will still go to great lengths to avoid paying tax." The swines! Tesco have the nerve to employ accountants to structure their affairs to comply with the law and pay every penny of the tax they owe.